ASA orders EE to drop 'most reliable broadband' claim

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Mobile operator EE must remove the claim that it offers “Britain’s most reliable broadband” from its marketing, after the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint from rival BT that the slogan was misleading.

The Inquirer tells us that BT filed three complaints against a direct marketing campaign by EE in which it quoted an Ofcom report that, it claimed, had found EE to be “Britain’s most reliable broadband for staying connected” and that the low latency and jitter scores mentioned in the report meant that “EE is good for real-time services such as Skype, video calling [and] gaming”.

The report says that EE told the advertising watchdog it had qualified the statements in the small print, but the ASA upheld the BT complaint because it thought that the explanations given in the body of the text were essentially too bold and unqualified compared to those clarifying statements.

The ASA also said most consumers would believe EE’s reliability claim to relate to all broadband connections in a house or flat.

“Because we considered that consumers would understand the claim to relate to reliability of a broadband connection, including fixed-line and wireless router performance, and EE had not provided sufficient evidence to substantiate the claim, we concluded that it was misleading,” the ASA said.

“The ad must not appear in its current form again. We told EE to ensure they held sufficient evidence to substantiate their claims in future.”